Happiness had a scent. It was the sharp tang of rosin in my lab, the smell of ozone after a reactor ignition, and the faint trace of my father’s old leather jacket. But I forgot it the instant a bullet shattered my ribcage. In 2026, triumph turned out to be remarkably lethal.

  I was thirty. In my previous life, I was a lead process engineer—the corporation’s “golden brain.” My life was built from blueprints, and the pinnacle of those designs was Project Zenith: a compact fusion core capable of powering an entire city. I loved physics for its honesty—apply force and you get a measurable result. No miracles. Just equations that always balance.

  It ended on a blinding Thursday. The main stage of the Technology Forum, thousands of cameras, applause so loud it muffled thought. I stood beside the prototype, explaining the principles of plasma confinement. I was at the peak.

  I never heard the shot—supersonic rounds always outrun their sound. I only felt the massive impact. From a mechanical standpoint, it was simple: kinetic energy transferred into my body, turning tissue and bone into pulp. I was thrown backward, straight onto my priceless device.

  Lying on the stage, I saw panic erupt in the crowd. But my fading gaze caught the men in tailored suits who reached the stage first. They weren’t calling for medics. They were reaching for my blueprints and hard drives.

  The pure mathematics of betrayal. My life was worth less than the patent for Zenith. To take the technology, they had to remove its creator.

  The first thing you feel when a sniper round hits you isn’t pain. It’s cold—an arctic chill spreading rapidly from the center of your chest. Then comes the sticky, nauseating warmth of your own blood. The stage lights turned unbearably white…

  And then the light went out.

  I didn’t die. At least, not immediately.

  I found myself in absolute nowhere.

  Space surrounded me—endless, cold, and terrifyingly silent. The stars weren’t distant points but frozen flares suspended in the void. I couldn’t feel my body, couldn’t feel weight. But I felt a current. Some invisible, intangible force, like a vast oceanic stream, gently yet insistently pushing me forward.

  My mind, trained in logic, refused to accept it. Where was the tunnel? The neurological shutdown? Instead—momentum in a vacuum. I drifted along the current, unable to resist, until a point of light appeared ahead.

  Light. Blinding, pulsating. I lunged toward it—or perhaps the current hurled me in. The moment I entered that radiance, everything turned pure white. No shadows. No outlines. No sound. Perfect white noise.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Then the ground—if it could be called that—vanished.

  A chasm opened beneath me. Deep, ink-black emptiness darker than space itself. It wasn’t just there—it was calling. It pulled at me with monstrous force. I didn’t even have time to scream before I was screwed into the darkness like water down a drain.

  The speed became unbearable.

  Impact.

  And that was when I woke up.

  It was the worst “good morning” of my life.

  The smell hit first. Rot, excrement, stagnant urine. I tried to inhale, but my lungs answered with sharp pain, and dust clawed at my throat. I opened my eyes and immediately squinted. The light was too bright, and reality was too filthy.

  I was lying on a heap of trash. Rotten crates were scattered around me, fat rats scurrying nearby. I tried to lift a hand to wipe my eyes—and froze.

  It wasn’t my hand.

  A tiny, skeletal palm, so filthy that dirt caked thick beneath the nails. Thin wrists—skin stretched over bone. Where were the calluses from years of handling tools? Where was my watch? I frantically touched my face—small, hollow. A child’s face. Eleven, maybe. What the hell? Consciousness transfer into a different biological host? A dying brain’s hallucination? Even now, my engineer’s mind was desperately trying to classify the madness.

  “Look at that—the runt’s awake!” a raspy voice barked above me.

  I looked up. Three of them. Ragged, caked in filth, faces that looked as if intelligence had abandoned them generations ago. The stench made my eyes water. The largest, wearing a torn leather vest, kicked me in the side.

  The pain was so real I nearly blacked out. At thirty, you know pain; you know how to compartmentalize it. But this child’s body—it was one exposed nerve.

  “Hey, idiot, you got any coin? Or did you just decide to die in our spot?” The one in the vest crouched down, baring rotten teeth.

  I began to shake. Not from fear—but from the primal, raw fury of a grown man trapped in a scrawny body. My mind calculated: targets—three. Combined mass—roughly two hundred and fifty kilograms. My mass—maybe thirty at most. No leverage. No weapon. Only option: flee.

  And then something clicked in the back of my head. Like an old relay finally snapping into place.

  [Will to Live — Activated]

  It wasn’t the voice of a god. It felt like high-end software booting inside my skull.

  A hum in my ears. My vision sharpened with surgical precision. I saw, in terrifying detail, how the man in the vest was winding up for another blow. The tension in his muscles. The shift of weight onto his right leg.

  Slow. Too slow.

  I didn’t wait. I sank my teeth into his ankle—straight through the filthy fabric of his trousers. He screamed like he was being slaughtered. I rolled free, using the momentum of his stumble, and bolted down the alley.

  My legs tangled. My heart pounded in my throat. My lungs burned—but I ran. I ran through that damned medieval labyrinth, leaping over piles of refuse until I burst into an open square.

  I doubled over, gasping. Blood trickled from my nose. My hands trembled.

  Fine, I thought, spitting blood into the mud. I’m in another world. In someone else’s body. Gravity seems roughly comparable to Earth’s. The atmosphere is breathable. That means physics still works. And if physics works, I’ll survive.

  Because I truly—desperately—want to live.

  I lifted my head and saw two moons hanging in the sky.

  Two damn moons.

  Astrophysics can go to hell.

  Fine.

  We’ll work with what we’ve got.